EDITOR’S NOTE: The LSU fans have voted and the Top 5 Night Games in Tiger Stadium history have been decided! The No. 1 game according to LSUsports.net’s fan poll was LSU’s 28-21 win over Florida on Oct. 11, 1997, when the Tigers took down the top-ranked Gators, then the goal posts.
ONE-DERFUL
LSU shocks nation’s top-ranked Gators defense, Tyler fuels Tigers’ biggest upset
By Jim Kleinpeter
Times-Picayune staff writer
Published Sunday, October 12, 1997
BATON ROUGE — A game LSU coach Gerry DiNardo denied all week was a big one turned into perhaps the biggest victory in school history.
In front of the second-largest crowd in school history, the Tigers outplayed No. 1-ranked Florida in all phases for a stunning 28-21 upset at Tiger Stadium on Saturday.
LSU scored two touchdowns in a span of 93 seconds in the fourth quarter to snap a 14-14 tie and the defending national champion Gators’ 25-game winning streak in the Southeastern Conference.
LSU safety Raion Hill’s interception with 2:47 left stopped Florida’s last drive, and the LSU offense held the ball the remainder of the game to launch an all-out celebration.
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the following games were chosen to be the Top 10 in the history of Tiger Stadium.
LSU 35, Spring Hill 0
22.7% of voters
No Photos Available
LSU 28, Notre Dame 8
21.9% of voters
No Photos Available
Much of the raucous crowd of 80,677 streamed onto the field, some even before the final horn sounded, and pulled down the goal posts. Players tossed their helmets skyward and hugged each other to the chants of “L-S-U.”
“We did it,” LSU defensive tackle Chuck Wiley said. “I knew it was going to happen this way. We won the big game, the biggest game. No. 1 in the country, and we brought them down. They’re out of the clouds now.”
And the Tigers (5-1, 3-1) are out of the doldrums they seemed to be in after a poor effort and a narrow victory at Vanderbilt last week.
DiNardo called his group a “struggling 4-1 team” as it prepared to go against the No. 1 team in the country. But with his staff, he devised a game plan that slowed the Gators’ high-powered passing attack and took advantage of the Tigers’ scoring opportunities.
It was the first time LSU has beaten a No. 1 team in nine tries. The victory compares with LSU’s 1966 Cotton Bowl victory against unbeaten and second-ranked Arkansas and a 1959 victory against Ole Miss in which Billy Cannon returned a punt 89 yards for a fourth-touchdown touchdown in a 7-3 victory.
The victory also puts LSU back into the SEC Western Division race. The Tigers are one-half game behind Auburn (6-0, 3-0), which plays host to Florida on Saturday.
“It was a great night,” DiNardo said. “Our guys played really hard, and I was happy to see them play as hard as they did at the end. It was a lot of fun to be in that situation, and I want our guys to build on it.”
The Tigers jumped to a 14-0 lead in the first quarter and led 14-7 at the half. Florida (5-1, 3-1) tied the score on its first possession of the second half, but the LSU defense held firm and provided the tie-breaking score.
LSU cornerback Cedric Donaldson intercepted a Doug Johnson pass and returned the ball 31 yards for a touchdown to make the score 21-14 with 11:40 left in the fourth quarter.
On the ensuing kickoff, LSU’s Theo Williams batted the ball out of return man Bo Carroll’s hands, and Troy Twillie recovered for LSU at Florida’s 30-yard line. Four plays later, LSU quarterback Herb Tyler ran 12 yards on an option keeper for his second touchdown of the game to make the score 28-14.
“We had bad plays tonight, which we usually don’t have and the other team usually does,” Florida coach Steve Spurrier said. “When it was 14-all, we had two bad plays in a row. Two bad plays against a good team will get you beat.
“They blocked better than us. They tackled better than us. They rushed the passer better than us. They just beat us tonight.”
Johnson passed for 346 yards but was intercepted four times, twice by Donaldson, and was hit repeatedly after throwing. LSU sacked him five times and broke Florida’s streak of 62 consecutive games with at least one touchdown pass.
“We were relentless tonight,” defensive tackle Anthony McFarland said. “We just kept hitting them and hitting them.”
The LSU offense was hitting on a few more cylinders this week than last, especially quarterback Herb Tyler. He scored LSU’s first touchdown on a 40-yard run and completed 10 of 17 passes for 172 yards without an interception. His biggest was a 15-yard gain to Abram Booty on a third-and-six play with less than 1:50 remaining that allowed the Tigers to run out the clock.